Twentieth International Conference on Knowledge, Culture, and Change in Organizations

Abstract

As organizations evolve, they demand more collaborative, efficient and effective ways to get work done. It is essential to evaluate and improve organizational culture. At our organization, over time, structure with twenty-two teams brought issues of redundancies, overlap, ambiguities, and lack of clarity about who was responsible for what. With the arrival of a new dean, a task force was charged to examine existing cross-departmental teams, and make recommendations for improvement. After a systematic analysis of existing team structure, getting input from stakeholders by performing additional studies (questionnaires, focus groups, and individual interviews), the task force coded the twenty-two existing teams with similar functionalities into three categories, and then deconstructed them, and reconstructed three core teams appended with in a process-driven team framework. The new framework clearly defines charges, mission for three primary teams, and members’ role in these teams, and recommends a process for each member to facilitate additional ad hoc/task based groups to carry out tasks which originally handled by a standard team. The new framework significantly reduces staff time, maximizes overall participation, and improves diversity, equity, and transparency. It also underscores the connection between individual values with the mission of organization. In this paper, we articulate the project in details from three aspects. 1. Inclusive Leadership 2. Adaptive Planning and 3. Evidence-Based Solution. We also cover the status of the project, next steps and further assessment plans. Attendees should be able to apply the framework into their organizational practices.